When the scribe had entered these details on the form, the coroner added his thumbmark on it and presented the paper to the judge. Then Judge Dee ordered him to search the clothes of the dead man. The coroner found in the sleeve of the jacket a wooden ruler, and a soiled scrap of paper. He laid these objects on the table.

The judge gave the ruler a casual look, then smoothed out the piece of paper. He raised his eyebrows. While putting the scrap of paper in his sleeve he said:

"All present shall now file past the corpse and try to identify it. We shall begin with Liu Fei-po and Master Wang."

Liu Fei-po looked cursorily at the disfigured face, then shook his head and quickly passed on. His face was of a deadly pallor. Guildmaster Wang wanted to follow his example but suddenly he uttered an astonished cry. Suppressing his aversion he stooped over the corpse, then exclaimed:

"I know this man! It's Mao Yuan, the carpenter! Last week he came to my house to repair a table!"

"Where did he live?" the judge asked quickly.

"That I don't know, Your Honor," Wang replied, "but I'll ask my house steward; it was he who called him."

Judge Dee silently caressed his side whiskers. Then he suddenly barked at the undertaker:

"Why didn't you, a professional undertaker who is supposed to know his job, immediately report to me that the coffin had been tampered with? Or isn't it the same one in which you placed the dead woman? Speak up and tell the truth!"

Stuttering with fear the undertaker answered:

"I… I swear it's the same coffin, Your Honor! I bought it myself two weeks ago and burnt my mark in the wood. But it could easily be opened, Your Honor! Since it was only a temporary coffin we didn't hammer the nails in very carefully and-"

Judge Dee cut him short with an impatient gesture.

"This corpse," he announced, "shall be properly clad in a shroud and replaced in the coffin. I shall consult the family of the deceased regarding the burial. Until then two constables shall stand guard in this hall, lest also this corpse disappear! Headman, bring the caretaker of this temple before me! What is that dog's-head doing anyway? He should have presented himself here!"

"The caretaker is a very old man, Your Honor," the headman said quickly. "He lives on a bowl of rice that some pious people bring twice daily to his cell next to the gatehouse. He is deaf, and nearly blind."

"Blind and deaf, forsooth!" the judge muttered angrily. He said curtly to Liu Fei-po:

"I shall without delay institute an investigation into the whereabouts of your daughter's body."

Then Ma Joong came back into the hall.

"I respectfully report," he said, "that I have searched this entire temple, including the garden behind it. There is no trace of a dead body having been concealed or buried there."

"Go now back with Master Wang," Judge Dee ordered him, "find out the address of the carpenter, and proceed there at once. I want to know what he has been doing these last days. And if he should have male relatives, I want them brought to the tribunal for questioning."

Having thus spoken, the judge rapped the table and declared the session closed.

Before leaving the hall he walked over to the coffin and scrutinized its inside. There were no bloodstains. Then he examined the floor all around it, but among the confused mass of footprints in the dust he could discover no smudges or other signs of blood having been wiped up there. Evidently the carpenter had been killed somewhere else, and his body brought to the hall and placed inside the coffin after the blood had already coagulated. He took leave of the company and left the hall, followed by Sergeant Hoong.

Judge Dee remained silent all the way back. But when he was in his private office and Hoong had helped him change into a comfortable house robe, his morose mood left him. As he sat down behind his desk he said with a smile:

"Well, Hoong, plenty of problems to solve! By the way, I am glad that I placed the professor under house arrest. Look what the carpenter carried in his sleeve!"

He pushed the scrap of paper over to Hoong, who exclaimed, astonished:

"The name and address of Dr. Djang are scribbled here, Your Honor!"

"Yes," Judge Dee said with satisfaction, "our learned doctor apparently overlooked that! Let me now see that list you had him draw up, Hoong."

The sergeant took a folded piece of paper from his sleeve. As he handed it to the judge he said dejectedly:

"As far as I can see, Your Honor, his handwriting is quite different from that of the love letters."

"You are right," the judge said. "There isn't the slightest resemblance." He threw the sheet on the table and continued: "When you have had your noon rice, Hoong, you might try to locate in the chancery a few samples of the handwriting of Liu, Han, Wang and Soo; all of them will have sent at one time or another letters to the tribunal." He took two of his large red official visiting cards from the drawer and gave them to the sergeant, adding: "Have these cards forwarded to Han Yung-han and Councilor Liang, with the message that I shall pay them a visit this afternoon."

When Judge Dee rose the sergeant asked:

"What on earth could have happened to the corpse of Mrs. Djang, Your Honor?"

"It is no use, Hoong," the judge replied, "to ponder over a puzzle as long as all pertaining pieces have not yet been assembled. I shall now put that entire problem out of my mind. I am going to eat my noon rice in my own house, and have a look how my wives and children are getting on. The other day my Third Lady told me that my two sons are already writing quite nice essays. But they're a couple of rascals, I tell you!"

Late in the afternoon, when Judge Dee came back to his private office, he found Sergeant Hoong and Ma Joong standing by his desk, bent over several sheets of paper. Hoong looked up and said:

"Here we have samples of the handwriting of our four suspects, Your Honor. But none of them resembles that of the dancer's letters."

Judge Dee sat down and carefully compared the various letters. After a while he said:

"No, there's nothing there! Liu Fei-po is the only one whose brush stroke reminds me a bit of that of the Student of the Bamboo Grove. I could imagine that Liu disguised his hand when he wrote those love letters. Our writing brush is a very sensitive instrument. It is very difficult indeed not to betray one's manner of handling it, even if one uses a different type of writing."

"Liu Fei-po could have known Candidate Djang's pen name through his daughter, Your Honor!" the sergeant said eagerly, "and used it for signing his letters for want of a better!"

"Yes," the judge said pensively. "I must get to know more about Liu Fei-po. That is one of the subjects I plan to raise with Han and the Councilor; they will be able to tell me more about him. Well, Ma Joong, what did you learn about the carpenter?"

Ma Joong sadly shook his large head.

"There's not much to be found out there, Your Honor! Mao Yuan lives in a hovel way down near the lake, near the fish market. There's only his old woman; you have never seen such an ugly old harpy! She hadn't been worrying at all about her husband's absence, because when he was on a job he would often stay away several days. And I don't blame the fellow either, cursed as he is with a woman like that! Well, three days ago he left in the morning saying that he was going to the house of Dr. Djang to repair some furniture for the coming wedding feast. He told his wife he would find a place to sleep in the servants' quarters there, for the job would take several days. That was the last she saw of him!"

Ma Joong pulled a face and went on:

"When I told his pleasant mate the sad news, she only said that she had predicted long before that her old man would come to a bad end, because he always went to wine houses and gambling dens with his cousin Mao Loo. Then she asked for the blood money!"